PUZZLE #374
BRICK BY BRICK 9
Happy Valentine's Day! Apologies in advance that I wasn't able to make a fully-appropriate puzzle involving hearts or anything like that; all I could manage was a thematically-adjacent Final Answer to go with it. But I'm sure you'll like it despite that!
Place the 2x3 bricks into the grid below so that a crossword puzzle with
rotational symmetry is formed. Each of the Across and Down clues hint at answers
that appear in that row or column, all of which are in order.
Be careful with the rows marked with a 7, 8, and 9, as the bricks that
are placed in those rows will be split in half by a blue line, which you can see
in the diagram above. Also, the letters that go in the blue line's squares will
complete one answer in every Down column, though you'll have to figure out what
those letters are.
This week's FINAL ANSWER is the name of a romantic comedy movie
ACROSS
1) 50%
Remove a disc from an Xbox Series X, say
Trade this for that
2) Inventor's inspiration
Florida birthplace of rapper Pitbull
1,000-page book, for one
3) Bengay target
Playwright Chekhov
Rutabaga or radish
4) With "The", 1999 film that introduced "bullet time"
Bellybuttons
5) Felt under the weather
Murder, _____ Wrote
6) Jeans brand sometimes spelled with a question mark
Rec room
March 17 honoree, for short
7) Dissimilar
Porcine target in Angry Birds
Last letter in "IPA"
8) THE FINAL ANSWER
9) Strive (for)
San Diego Comic-_____
Art Institute of Chicago, e.g.
10) Bewildered on the briny?
A bit out of the ordinary
Cherry parts that can be knotted
11) Konami arcade game where you stomp on arrows to the beat, for short
African-American 3-year-old from Rugrats
12) Opening line of Green Eggs and Ham
Deodorant once advertised as being "Strong enough for a woman"
13) Six, in Japanese (or a streaming media device)
Pumpkin Spice _____ (Starbucks favorite)
First name of Drago from Rocky IV
14) Dipper or Mabel from Gravity Falls (HINT: They share the same birthday)
Tartan pattern
Like two prime numbers six digits apart (NON-MATHY CLUE: Seductive)
15) Grains in a golf trap
Horse & donkey's offspring
Furrow one's brow
DOWN
1) Love & _____ Hop: Atlanta (VH1 reality series)
Mexican fruit used as an ingredient in Hawaiian Punch
Some QB protectors
2) Naked man on the Sistine Chapel ceiling
Not illuminated
Slipknot's second album (or the corn-growing state that they hail from)
3) Kylo Ren's mother
Cary who played the title role in Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Comparable (to)
4) Disney film where Mickey Mouse shakes hands with Leopold
"The Wreck of the _____ Fitzgerald" (Gordon Lightfoot hit)
5) Like tightrope walking without a harness
Unskippable annoyances for users of Peacock's free tier
6) Spam folder filler
Keyboard key usually placed to the left of F1
Director Bakshi who pioneered adult animated films
7) Doomed with bad luck
Bashful ghost playable in Super Mario Party
Country located east of Mauritania
8) Devour vindaloo, say
"Perhaps... perhaps not"
Spray-on _____
9) "Hurry up!"
Strategic game where players remove matchsticks
Stranger Things character with a lisp
10) Turner and Fey
Phys ed class
Like a poorly-maintained hotel
11) Format that beat out Betamax
It "makes the people come together", according to a Madonna song
12) Word following "Wall" or "Sesame"
Star sometimes used instead of a bullet point
13) Lamb Chop's coat
Check endorser
High School Prodigies Have It Easy _____ in Another World (anime series)
14) Bible book before Obadiah
Underworld's 1992–2012 The Anthology, for one
70s/80s sitcom starring Danny DeVito
15) Dino, to the Flintstones
Is overflowing (with)
"The Gray Lady" of newspapers, briefly
Once you believe you've figured out the FINAL ANSWER, send it to either redhead64@chartermi.net or itsredhead64@gmail.com (though I'm more likely to check the second one) and I'll put your name on a solvers list once I post the answers in about two weeks. You can also use those email addresses to give me some comments and feedback (or even ask for a hint, though you'll be marked as having used one if you do so) or send me the answer to last week's puzzle, if you haven't already figured it out. If you have a printer and want to solve this puzzle on paper, just head below the break for a link to a .PDF version which you can print out!
